


The Reign Of The Wolf

by germanjj



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Explicit Sexual Content, Getting Together, M/M, Murder Husbands, Post Season 3, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26197711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/germanjj/pseuds/germanjj
Summary: You rarely hear about people falling in love like that: fighting it, screaming and kicking, being dragged by their hair across the ground to their inevitable downfall. Will fell in love like that. Sometimes quieter, lost in the sheer agony of it; and sometimes loud and with his eyes open and his heart wretched out of his chest. You’ve seen how it started; now follow it to the end. Set a few months after The Fall, everyone has to accept that it’s never over as long as Hannibal walks free.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing on this story for years, it's 50% done, so I hope posting will kick my ass into gear to finally get it to 100%.

Will knows he’s gotten worse. He pushes past the two teenage girls blocking his path, barely avoiding the old man coming out of the shop, and he’s already overwhelmed. There are not many more people than that. There’s another couple on the other side the street getting into their car and a woman with a toddler on her arm walking up to the only restaurant in town.

That’s it. Will has counted barely five vehicles passing by since he parked on the other end of the main street at the gas station while he’s on his way to the grocery store. 

He can’t do it, thinks about turning around and leaving and coming back some other time, some other day that isn’t today. 

Will clenches his jaw, lowering his gaze, so he doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes and pushes through. 

Sometimes he thinks about the irony of him being the lone white guy with his baseball cap on, living outside of the outskirts of this tiny place, coming into town once a week to get his groceries and what else he might need. He wonders if people think of him as a serial killer sometimes. He wonders if they know who he is.

He stops just outside the store to let a woman and her puppy pass him, his eyes lingering on the dog a substantial while longer than he’s been able to meet her friendly smiling eyes when she greets him. 

Then he steps inside the store, immediately caught up in its smell, a heavy mix of cleaning product and something stale and damp Will can’t place. 

He tries his best to be pleasant enough to greet Andy the cashier who’s here every Wednesday just like Will and who’s friendly and bored and always happy to see Will, the mysterious guy from the woods who he remembers from the news but doesn’t quite remember if that’s a good or a bad thing. 

Will fails today, his eyes not even close to coming up to Andy’s. A small nod is all he can manage. 

He takes a deep breath and tries to block everything out. 

Humans overwhelm him now that he isn’t used to them at all anymore. There emotions bubbling so close to the surface, bleeding so freely into the air around them, their desires coating their skins like a heavy perfume that Will can taste more that he can smell it. 

Bile rises in his throat, and Will pushes that down too.

“Found everything alright today?” Andy asks, his voice just that bid too loud as if he’s fighting with the noise of the TV blaring above him all day. 

“Yes, thank you,” Will mumbles, placing the meager sum of things that make his life now on the counter. 

The TV is bothering him. 

He tries not to look, not o hear the news that are showing right now. He doesn’t have one at home, too distracting, too alluring to something he’s long put past himself. 

Or so he hopes. 

Most of the days he’s in here, he manages to not pay any attention to the TV, blocking it out like all the rest of the everyday life around him. 

Today is different. Today it’s Jack’s face on the screen. Or rather Jack standing in the background while a reporter, disgusting in her cheerfulness, talks about a new murder. 

New as in the third victim in five months. Will is transfixed before he realizes it’s happening. 

He watches Jack and Zeller on the tiny screen; can’t hear anything of what they’re saying, of course, but he’s familiar enough with Jack’s face to know that this one is bad, this one hits closer to home than the others. 

There’s a dumpster surrounded by FBI personnel, tiny plastic bags covering the ground, dozens of them. 

One body they say, cut up in pieces. Somewhere between 50 and 70.

They call him the Puzzle Maker. 

Will balls up his fists, avoiding the confused look of Andy he had all but forgotten in front of him, bagging up Will’s groceries, and Will stumbles back. 

They call him the Puzzle Maker, and Will knows they’re wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

ooo

Jack hates it. The simmer of anger, of hopelessness. Something that had grown ever stronger in the last years. He'd always dismissed the agents who'd become complacent, indifferent even, thinking that no matter what they did, there would always be a new killer. And countless new victims.

"Seven dead!" he shouts, his voice bouncing violently off the walls, making the newbies, Duhamel and Jackson, flinch. Zeller just averts his eyes. 

"Seven victims and we have nothing! Not a single lead, not a scrap of usable evidence."

Silence falls heavily in the room and on the two metal slabs filled with little plastic bags containing human remains. Two of them because the remains are of two different individuals. 

"Boss," Zeller starts, and Jack dismisses him immediately. 

"I don't wanna hear it."

"Doesn't make it less true," Zeller sing-songs and Jack has to give him kudos to talk back like that after all these years working together. 

"It's not Hannibal."

"I didn't say it was. I'm just stating that without either Will or Hannibal, we haven't made as much progress as we used to."

Jack grunts a response. "Run it again," he waves off the shocked faces of the newbies and motions Zeller to follow behind him as he leaves the room. 

"Boss?" Zeller sprints to walk next to him. "The tip lines are not standing still; maybe that will give us something."

Jack doubts it, but, at this point, he is ready to try anything. "Talk to the team, let me know if they have something."

"Will do." With that, he leaves Jack and vanishes behind a door to his right, following the hallway down to where the call center team sits. 

Jack had hated the idea of letting the press in on the case. He'd fought it until the very last minute, his instinct telling him not to give that monster a platform, a stage. But Jack isn't someone to avoid going down a lane just because it might bruise his ego. 

For better or worse, they are at their wit's end, and they need a break.

ooo

The light switch makes a dull sound, and a second later, the house is bathed in cold, empty light. It hasn't always been cold and empty. Once it had been full of life, colorful and vibrant with love. But ever since they had carried Bella out of this house, a sheet covering her beautiful face, the house had stayed lifeless. Unfriendly.

Jack pushes the thoughts about his wife out of his mind. There are days when he is inviting them in, days when all he would look forward to is to come home and bury himself in memories. Today is not one of those days. 

Instead, he busies himself in the kitchen, a small dinner, a quick washing up of the few dishes he needed to make them. It's quiet. No TV, no radio, and Jack prefers it that way. He keeps his mind at work, runs through the day as if the new environment will help him piece something together; he couldn't quite connect during the day.

He takes his meal to the dining table, sets his phone screen facing down next to him and starts eating without paying much attention to the food itself. It's bland and lifeless, a simple act of nourishment, nothing more. 

He startles when his phone jerks awake. The vibration angry and unwelcoming against the table. 

Jack picks it up and turns it around. The screen shows no caller ID, the number unfamiliar to Jack. 

"Hello?"

There's breathing on the other end. Not the creepy kind. It sounds as if someone is hesitating to speak.

"Hello?" Jack tries again.

"Jack?" 

The familiar voice catches him off guard. Jack sits up taller, pain shooting up his spine from the sudden movement. He pauses for a moment, holding the phone away from him and taking a deep breath. Now he's the one not sure if he wants to speak.

"Will?"

The caller hesitates again, and Jack pictures him closing his eyes, collecting all his strength for the next words he's about to speak.

"Jack, I want to help. I can help."

ooo

"I thought I'd never see you again." Jack shakes Will's hand and is surprised by how good it feels to see the man alive and well. At least as well as he can make himself look on the outside. There's something different about his eyes. A haunted, fearful look that is faintly similar to the Will Graham Jack met back when they were both young and eager and thought they could take on the world.

"A few weeks ago, I would have sworn you wouldn't." Will Graham looks thin and worn out, as if he's not fully alive, as if there's only half of him here.

Jack studies the other man's face expectantly. The cold air is tugging on their necks, and Will shivers slightly, burying his hand in the pockets of his jacket. "What changed?" Jack asks him. 

"The Puzzle Maker."

Jack nods, encouraging Will to go on. A man and a woman walk by them, coffee cups in their hands and their eyes curiously on Will.

Will lowers his own gaze, waiting for them to be gone.

"I've seen something on the news," he finally explains. "I … I don't have a TV at home, and I've been avoiding newspapers, so I haven't seen anything before." His eyes dart up apologetically and meet Jack's for a fraction of a second. 

"I saw a report at my local food market."

"What did you see?" Jack asks, not talking about the news report.

"A man desperate for attention, for- for some kind of power, meaning."

"All serial killers want some kind of power. Hell, most people want that, but we don't all chop people up into tiny pieces and distribute them all over town."

"That part doesn't mean anything to him."

"What?" This is the first bit of useful information Will had uttered since coming here. "He's making a complete spectacle out of it; I think he's rather invested in that matter."

Will shakes his head dismissively. "He doesn't care about that," he repeats. "It's just a way of getting rid of a body. He's probably read it somewhere in a book or seen it in a movie. He's young and naive and not very intelligent. He wants to kill. That's where he derives his pleasure from. The bodies are just an annoying byproduct of his hobby that he needs to dispose of."

In the back of his mind, Jack is relieved to find that his body is still recoiling at the nonchalant way, Will is describing the death of innocent people.

"So, you want back in." It's a statement, and still, Jack waits for a clear reaction on Will's part. 

"Yes," he says, eyes cast down, but his voice surprisingly steady.

Jack hesitates. There's a world of reasons why he should say no. A world of reasons why he should say yes. Her wonders not for the first time why once again Will's life is ending up in Jack's hand to decide upon. 

"One misstep, you're out," Jack says by way of confirmation. "You do as I say when I say it and how I say it. If I feel like you're going off the rails, I pull you out. If you're even bending the law, I will personally put you in jail and throw away the key. Are we clear?"

Will huffs, grimaces. "And here I thought I'm here to help you."

"That's what I'm not so sure about. Are we clear?"

Will just nods, and Jack's not sure if he's sensing relief or resignation from him. He's also not sure which would frighten him more. 

"Go inside, get the paperwork handled with and meet me at my car."

"Where are we going?"

"If you're back in, you have to see the last crime scene and," Jack waves his hand, "do your thing."

"Last?"

Jack purses his lips. "I got the call an hour ago. We have a new victim."

Will's eyes meet his, holding his gaze for a second, and Jack shivers involuntarily. The things those eyes have seen, have witnessed. And yet Jack can't shake the feeling that he's leading Will to his own slaughter once again. The only question this time being how much of it would be of Will's own making.

"Oh, and Will?" 

Will stops and turns back around.

"Has he contacted you?"

Will swallows visibly, his eyes meeting Jack's head-on. "No."

Jack nods, his stomach turning. Will Graham has never been a good liar.

ooo

The tingling sensation in his chest doesn't stop the whole way to the crime scene. It festers in the depths of his heart, growing more and more real and palpable, and Will finds himself rubbing that spot as if it's a faint ache he can massage away.

They don't talk the whole way. Jack's never been much for small talk, especially with Will, and Will is grateful for it. He feels like a hunter, like a killer, trained to take on the scent of their prey, and his body is coiled to start, to immerse himself into the old, familiar world of blood and horror and purpose. 

They stop in front of a hotel. An old building, one of the nicer chains, hidden in the corner of a busy street. Will steps out of the car and immediately feels someone else nudging at his mind as he sees the large trash bins on the side of the building. 

'Good spot.'

The place is crawling with FBI agents, the forensic unit, and two or three local cops who keep trying to keep nosy hotel guests and staff away from the area. 

"I think we got half of him," Zeller announces as a way of greeting them both. If he's surprised to see Will next to Jack, he doesn't show it. "One of the hotel staff accidentally threw his keys into the dumpster. He climbed in, touched something that felt like a hand, and, for the life of me, I will never understand that part, opened the bag and found an actual human hand in there."

"Any chance to ID the victim?" Jack asks. 

Zeller shakes his head. "He was thorough. We got the hand, but the prints are not registered. Seems like we have to wait for the lab. We got other bits and pieces too, but not sure how much of the victim is actually here."

Will barely registers their conversation. He leaves the two men behind, stepping into the busy chaos around him, his eyes scanning where the plastic bags full of body parts are gathered. There's one particularly unlucky agent in a hazmat suit rummaging inside one of the three trash cans of the hotel, handing small black trash bags to another agent.

It feels too easy to slip back into this role. Will's body remembering as if it was a spot in a long-rehearsed dance routine, and Will slipped right back in with the other dancers, performing alongside them, moving in the right way, the right time, as if he himself, was a piece of the puzzle. 

Will rubs one hand on his coat, the rough fabric pulling him back into reality. He doesn't know how he feels about it yet. But his heart is beating steady in his chest while his neck flushes with fear. 

"You're ready to do your thing?" Jack appears beside him. "Should I ask everyone to step away for a minute?"

"No need," Will says, quieter than he intended, and only now that Jack mentions them, Will becomes aware of the agents again. Of how they're looking at him as if he was a magician, ready to perform his grotesque bit for an audience who would look onto it with a mixture of morbid fascination and plain disgust. 

Will looks around, pushing the onlookers out of his mind.

It comes to him easily. It's in the pale sunlight reflecting on the puddle next to where they parked the car. It's in the distance between the hotel's main entrance and the trash cans around this corner. It's in the angle of the street light, now off, that is sitting at the very end of this corner. Nothing here seems like a scene. Nothing constructed, no show, no careful consideration. Just a lucky spot, a convenient corner out of sight of curious onlookers. 

"Why not?"

'Because I'm already doing it,' Will thinks but keeps those words to himself. "There's nothing here," he states, not without disappointment. "It's just a dump side he came across by chance. He's not tied to this place."

Will looks around, watches a cab driver drop off some unassuming, and now shocked guests across the street. 

"He just drove past and saw an opportunity."

Jack's face gets darker. "We need to find where he kills them."

"Or where he chops them up."

Eyes not hiding shock and wariness land on Will, but he barely feels it, as if it's just an unimportant side note, like a tiny fly, mildly annoying but ultimately uninteresting. 

'Dump some here, rest later somewhere else. Don't stop for long.'

Will watches a car pull up to his left, a middle-aged woman staring at them in confusion. She scrambles out of her car, her uniform identifying her as hotel staff, and she slowly makes her way to the staff entrance behind the trash cans, all the while not breaking her stare. 

Will trots over to her car and turns around. 

'Yes. Keep the engine running. It's just a few small trash bags, no need to make a show out of it.'

Jack follows Will and Will waits until he's within earshot. 

"He stopped his car here. Went over there, threw the bags into the bin, and then left."

"Just our luck. Camera's don't cover this spot." Jack shoves his hands into his coat pockets. 

"Even if they did, they're probably not recording. If they're on at all."

Sudden movement at the hotel entrance makes them both look over. 

"Oh, come on!" Jack groans as they watch two vans stop just next to the yellow tape. Satellite dish on the roof of one and  
big, flashy stickers with labels of several local and national news outlets announce the press's arrival like someone shouting through a megaphone. A second later, cameras are pointed towards them and Will takes a step, moving himself behind Jack's bigger frame. 

"Let's get you out of here," Jack says, apparently having the same idea. "I don't need your face plastered all over the news tonight."

ooo

The phone starts ringing not half an hour after Will has entered his hotel room, taken a quick shower, and then sat down to choose his dinner from the sparse offering his hotel had.

The sound still goes through him like a taser shock, all-encompassing, and his pulse speeds up in a pavlovian response. The sound is muffled; the phone hurried deep in his small backpack. 

Will waits it out for five minutes. He's made it to ten once, never over. Today is not a ten minute day. 

At precisely the five minute mark, he gets up and walks over to the bag, retrieving the phone out of a side pocket in the bag's lining. 

He accepts the call.

He doesn't say anything but carries the phone back to the table, places it face up, and sits back down. 

"Hello, Will." Hannibal's voice sounds as if he'd seen the whole thing happening, patiently waiting. Knowing Will would give in eventually. 

"Hello, Hannibal," Will sighs. It's been two weeks since his last call, and Will had been- missing it.

"You are not in your home, I presume?" 

Will huffs. "You and I both know that you know exactly where I am."

"How does Jack feel having you back in the field?" Hannibal jumps right over the accusation, not pretending even for a moment to be shocked. 

Will shudders at the feeling of safety the thought brings him, knowing Hannibal monitors his every move.

A cold, painful feeling follows right after, grabbing the back of his neck like a hand. "He thinks this will end with me dead," Will says, knowing it's the truth. "Jack sees me as a dead man walking."

Hannibal stays silent on the other end and Will basks in the idea of him seething, of something being out of Hannibal's control. Of this something being Will's life. 

"Do you know anything about the case?" Will asks because he has to. They both know it. 

Hannibal chuckles, a rich and pleased tone. "Are you asking me if I'm involved?"

"I know you're not."

Hannibal takes a breath, something Will can hear so clearly as if he were standing right next to him. Can feel the rush over the back of his neck as if it happens to him. 

"I am not familiar with the case. But I can look into it if you want my help, Will."

"No, thank you, Hannibal," Will responds, knowing that they are both fully aware that Hannibal will look into it regardless, just because Will is involved now.

"Jack asked me about you," Will mentions, just to hear Hannibal's reaction. 

"What did you tell him?"

"That I have not spoken to you."

Will can hear Hannibal's smile in his next words. "Did he believe you?"

"No."

_Flashback_

There was another “after” in Will’s life. After the Red Dragon. After The Fall. It didn’t feel like an extension to his life after Hannibal, but more like a separate part. A new chapter. A new Will.

Somehow hollowed out and empty. Without purpose.

Days blurred into weeks. Into months. The new house was just as secluded as his old one. Like an exact, boring copy, same rooms, same shed, same grinding noise the front door made, and same raft of cold air that came through the fireplace. 

He was far away from the next town. A dirt road leading two miles north until it hit the main road leading up to a collection of houses and buildings rather than a place that warranted its own name. 

There was a stream too, right behind the house, and one of the main reasons Will had chosen this place. Icy cold and strong, stronger than what he’d been used to, and when he was standing in the middle of it, it took all his strength and concentration not to be dragged away with the force of it. He spent a lot of his time there now. Thinking. Not thinking. Trying to just be. Or not be; he wasn’t entirely sure.

It was lonely up here. There were no dogs or neighbors or friends dropping by for a chat. No Molly. Will preferred it that way. Or chose to prefer it that way. The cliff still sat deep in his bones, and the fall had shifted something inside him; he wasn’t sure he could get back. Or want back. 

It was a Wednesday; that’s all he would remember. A Wednesday, because he’d been to town and done his grocery shopping, and he only did that on Wednesdays.

He’d come home, had put the groceries away and started dinner. He’d been busy the next hour, with eating, washing up, hanging up his laundry on the clothesline outside, where it was cold, but the sun still high and the wind going strong so everything would dry quickly.

He’d been careless.

The minute he stepped back into the house, the phone rang. 

The empty clothing basket he’d been holding fell to the ground, unnoticed.

The ringing had a shrill sound, metallic and high pitched. It wasn’t a land-line, Will had ripped that out when he moved here. It wasn’t his mobile phone either, because he didn’t carry one anymore. 

He figured the only person who would want to contact him was Jack or the bureau, and they knew where he lived and could very well make the two-hour trip out here in person if they needed him. 

They hadn’t needed him so far.

He saw the object on his cabinet. A black phone, not a new model but no apparent signs of being used. 

Will was frighteningly sure he knew how the phone had gotten here. And who the person calling was.

Will listened to the repetitive sound, felt it carving away on his insides until the pain got too strong, too hot, and he gasped for air and spurred into action.

The next conscious thought had come with the phone in his hand. The ringing had stopped. With the phone pressed to his ear, Will hadn’t said a word, just listened.

“Hello, Will,” came Hannibal’s voice, detached and far away sounding.

But it had been him, familiar and soothing and threatening all at once, and Will had found himself with his back against a wall, slipping down until he was sitting etched between his fridge and a dresser, pressing the phone against his ear so much the headache would linger over the next day.

“How are you, my dear Will?” Hannibal had asked politely, and Will had found himself leaning into the sound, unable to answer.

A scream had wrought itself through Will’s lungs, breaking out as a weak, painful sob. He’d started crying so suddenly, the tears only followed later, like an afterthought, running down his cheeks until he felt hollowed out and bone dry. 

Will hadn’t said a single word that day.

ooo

The room feels smaller than he remembers, when Will enters the lecture hall he’d spent his days in, teaching eager, fresh-faced students about the dark abyss that is the human mind.

It’s empty now and even the light seems harsher, colder than what he recalls. Will steps into the middle of the room and looks up at the rows of seats. 

He barely recognizes the person he had been all those years ago. 

“Will.” Alana stops in the doorway, waiting for Will to look up to her, which he doesn’t quite manage. But he sees her face, sees the look of relief, happiness and uncertainty directed at him. 

However, he knows that something had fundamentally shifted between them since he and Hannibal fell off that cliff.

She’d been there at the hospital after. She’d sat by his bed and had held his hand had asked what Will could remember from that night. And from after. 

Will didn’t notice back then, but he sees now how Alana doesn’t look at him quite the same. As if she’s sensing something about him that deepens the gap between them, eroding the foundation of their fragile friendship just like the cliffs were eroding that Will jumped off of. 

“Alana.” Will smiles at her, and at least that’s genuine. 

Neither of them makes a step towards the other. 

“How’s the family?”

“Healthy and happy,” comes the clipped reply and Will nods and lets it go. 

There’s a small part of him that mourns the friendship they could have had and that fell down into the ocean with them that night.

“Are you here to tell me that it’s not a good idea to come back?”

She doesn’t give in to his feeble attempt of a lighthearted joke. “I don’t need to tell you that,” she says and she could very well have slapped him in the face. 

“Why are you back, Will?” she asks him, pain lacing her words. “We both know that you won’t be walking away from this unharmed a third time.”

Will nods slowly, absentmindedly reaching for the table nearest to him and he lets his fingertips dance over the surface. He doesn’t think that he got to step away the last times. Doesn’t feel unharmed either. 

“I don’t know.”

That’s the truth and it isn’t. But it’s all he’s able to give her now, not enough to breach the physical and non-physical distance between them. 

“Promise me you will be careful.” Her gaze is strong, demanding a reply. 

Will wonders if her words are meant as a warning or a threat. 

Do not get yourself killed. Do not cross a line. Do not kill.

He nods and shoves his hands into his jean pockets, a gesture he only notices when he sees disappointment flicker over Alana’s face.

“So, you’re here to remember the good old days?” She asks, dropping her serious demeanor a fraction as if she made up her mind and now opts for politeness. 

“I don’t know if they were really that good, but they feel like a lifetime away.”

“We were basically children then,” she says and looks around the room, likely picturing her own days spent in here.

“Yeah. The world was much simpler then.”

They share silence after. Not comfortable, not uncomfortable. Just two people finding themselves on opposite ends of where they started wondering how they got here and if there was still time and energy left to walk back towards each other.

“If you want to ask me about Hannibal,” Will starts.

“I don’t want to ask you about Hannibal,” she says, and Will is surprised that she means it. 

He huffs a laugh. “Unlike every other person that works in this building.”

A new voice disturbs them. “Hannibal killed countless victims, cold-hearted, gruesome murders. Yet he chose to save your life by bringing you to a hospital, therefore risking to be caught or killed himself. All that after you’ve tried to end your lives by pushing both of you off a cliff.” It’s Jack’s voice, echoing off the walls as he stands beside her. “Yes, people have questions.”

He pauses as if he half expects Will to reply to that. 

Will can sense the same disappointment radiating off Jack just like Alana had felt just minutes before when he doesn’t.

“Questions -,” Jack continues, “- we don’t have time for right now. We have a new crime scene.”


End file.
